TY - JOUR T1 - Cigarette pack messages about toxic chemicals: a randomised clinical trial JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - 74 LP - 80 DO - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-054112 VL - 28 IS - 1 AU - Noel T Brewer AU - Michelle Jeong AU - Jennifer R Mendel AU - Marissa G Hall AU - Dongyu Zhang AU - Humberto Parada Jr AU - Marcella H Boynton AU - Seth M Noar AU - Sabeeh A Baig AU - Jennifer C Morgan AU - Kurt M Ribisl Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/28/1/74.abstract N2 - Background The USA can require tobacco companies to disclose information about harmful and potentially harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke, but the impact of these messages is uncertain. We sought to assess the effect of placing messages about toxic chemicals on smokers’ cigarette packs.Methods Participants were 719 adult cigarette smokers from California, USA, recruited from September 2016 through March 2017. We randomly assigned smokers to receive either factual messages about chemicals in cigarette smoke and their health harms (intervention) or messages about not littering cigarette butts (control) on the side of their cigarette packs for 3 weeks. The primary trial outcome was intention to quit smoking.Results In intent-to-treat analyses, smokers whose packs had chemical messages did not have higher intentions to quit smoking at the end of the trial than those whose packs had control messages (P=0.56). Compared with control messages, chemical messages led to higher awareness of the chemicals (28% vs 15%, P<0.001) and health harms (60% vs 52%, P=0.02) featured in the messages. In addition, chemical messages led to greater negative affect, thinking about the chemicals in cigarettes and the harms of smoking, conversations about the messages and forgoing a cigarette (all P<0.05).Discussion Chemical messages on cigarette packs did not lead to higher intentions to quit among smokers in our trial. However, chemical messages informed smokers of chemicals in cigarettes and harms of smoking, which directly supports their implementation and would be critical to defending the messages against cigarette company legal challenges.Trial registration number NCT02785484. ER -